When he lived in Nova Scotia, Jeffrey from Montreal, Canada, noted that the word some was often used as an intensifier, as in That’s some good or She’s some pretty or She’s right some pretty. Also common in the dialects of Labrador, Nova Scotia, and...
Once commonly heard in Australia, fair dinkum is used to describe something “authentic” or “legitimate.” This phrase is also used as an intensifier. Less common versions: square dinkum and straight dinkum. The expression fair dinkum drongo refers to...
Ian in Clyde, North Carolina, is puzzled when a colleague uses the term blue million, meaning “a large amount.” Along with words like zillion and gazillion, this expression functions as an indefinite hyperbolic numeral. Sometimes the...
Why do we describe someone or something very special as all that and a bag of chips? It’s an intensifier of the expression all that and appears to have been popularized by a 1991 newspaper story about new slang, playing off the earlier...
Theresa in Lyman, South Carolina, says her mother has long used the word quare to describe someone who is “odd” or “set in their ways” or otherwise “peculiar,” as in They’re the quarest people I’ve ever met. The term quare, also spelled quar...
The intensifier pure-d or puredee is a euphemism for pure damned or pure damn. It’s also sometimes rendered as pure-t, and used most often in the Southern United States and South Midlands. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
